HUGHTON'S PRAISE FOR MATCHWINNER LUALUA

22 August 2015

Paul Camillin

Brighton & Hove Albion boss Chris Hughton tonight praised his matchwinner Kazenga LuaLua after his third goal of the season provided another 1-0 win for the Seagulls.

Hughton is delighted with LuaLua's start to the season, and not just his goals, telling seagulls.co.uk, "At the moment he is scoring goals, but what is just as important, if not more important, is his contribution to the team.

"He’s playing a lot of 90 minutes at the moment, he has obvious ability going forward but he’s also doing a very good job for the team. He’s in a good place, but we’re probably a little too reliant on him at the moment .

"What we need to do is spread the goals around. The disappointment was in the second half as the game opened up, as these are the games where you need to kill teams off and take that pressure off.

"The clean sheet was really pleasing, we needed that, but what we also needed was our goalkeeper who made two exceptional saves today.

"We can build on that and we need to keep on being as resilient as we are and get the goals we need to win games, then we’ll keep causing teams problems."

Hughton felt his side didn't manage to hit the heights, in terms of performance, that they had against Nottingham Forest and Fulham.

He added, "We didn't reach the same levels that we did in previous games, certainly compared to our last game here and Fulham - and we relied on two saves from David Stockdale - but these are the type of games that you want to win.

"Over the 90 minutes I thought that we were the better side. They certainly created chances in the second half and arguably had the best chance of the game so we’re thankful for that, and these are the type of games you have in this division.

"Obviously we want to keep the momentum going. We have a really important game on Tuesday, with a really competitive squad and no injuries.

"We then have a really tough game at Ipswich, who are a really good side and I think they will continue to be up there until the end of the season."